


W.H. box #20-487

by kkamagui



Series: Dongwoon's Noodle House [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, Multidimensional Space-Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkamagui/pseuds/kkamagui
Summary: “Hear’ foo de grepbin,” Drifter says, the best he can around a mouthful of noodles. “Yer bof eh actuawy par’ bihk.”Shin has been around long enough to know how it translates:heard through the grapevine your boss is actually part Vex.He folds his hands over his stomach, mulling it over as he stares at the ceiling. It would not be surprising, really. Dongwoon’s Noodle House has a weird way of showing up in every which time, space and dimension exists and does not exist out there. Shin has other things to worry about, though. Like his paycheck. And Sparrow upkeep. Above all things: staying as retired as he possibly can.“No,” he finally decides. “She’s not nearly Vex-y enough.”
Relationships: The Drifter/Shin Malphur
Series: Dongwoon's Noodle House [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654246
Kudos: 17





	W.H. box #20-487

**Author's Note:**

> the whole dnh hq is set in a vague au of s. korea. shin is korean here

* * *

_Dongwoon’s Noodle House serves everywhere—even if not in your local area, you are still within our innovative delivery reach!_

_We are open at all hours. We deliver to all registered places and non-places, and for a heftier delivery fee, also to unregistered ones._

_Our delivery drivers are equipped with the safest, most cutting-edge space-time technology for multi-dimensional, inter-universal, extra-spatial travel and more. They are all experienced time-space-universe travelers, and work hard to ensure your delivery order gets there safely and quickly!_

_For any local, global, universal or dimensional/planar/spatial/temporal inquiries, please access our website at dongwoo̵n̶s̶@̶̘̃̏͜d̶̟̙͘͜i̵̛̮̕ṃ̵̱̰̗̂e̵̢͂n̸̡̈́̀̄͐̋̍̑̔̈̑͝s̸̳̻̙͉̼͚̮͓͇̏͛̈́̆̅̆̍͂̒̕͘̚͠͠ͅͅi̷͈͐͗͛̒͛̊̉̚o̴̜̝̻̰͚̮̱̳̓̐̾̎́̾͐͋͠͠n̵̡͇͕̠̍̿͗̈̐̎͝ơ̸̘͍̩̫̭͖̳̪̪̠̭̻̺͑͋̚ǫ̶̛̺̠̳͇̠̦͗̉͂̌̓̒͘͝ḓ̴̡̟̱͍͚̱̐̓͌͌͐̐͛̔̅͊̿̄̎̿ͅļ̵͔̙̦̩͓̝͈̳̭̩̬̎̇̚ė̷̢̱̙̺̣͖̣̩̌̽̅s̵̬̐.̷̛̜̰̮̰̲̥̜̜̗̬̯͕̺̳̱̠̜̤̃̀̍͊̈́̀͂͐̃́͐̿͐̂̎͒̑͂͋̓̈̆̕͜͝͝͠ͅ▒̶̧̭̮̝͍̯͙̪̳͈͋̾͗̈̂̏̀͋̔̊͑ͅ▒̶̧̢̡̢͇͇͍̲̝͖̙͇̞͖̱̙̻̹̙̩̰͈̝̺̠̲̬͒̍͐̈́̐̋̒̓͗͑̿̀̎̅̈́̋͒̊̂͑͗̇͋̇̅͐͝͝͝ͅ▒̶̨̱̭̫̹̻̩̤̭̭͖͈̝̿̍̈́̈́͊̇̌͝ͅ▒̷̧̨̡̛̭̩̠̰̝̦̺͉̫͚͓̜͈͇͒̆͑̉͆̽̂̈́̀͗̈́̊̿̂̿͑͑̽̌̽̐̐̚͝͝͠_

_T̶̝h̴̤̓a̷̡͝n̸̹̕k̵̳͝ ̶̞̏ỵ̴̈́ou for your patronage!_

* * *

Shin steers back into knowable, perceivable ground after his last delivery of the day. His vision swims with echoes of starlight and void, the green fire of the non-realm he’d just dropped over a double-jjajang order off at. His mouth tastes like copper and fades into something less bitter when he works his tongue over his teeth.

He taps the side of his helmet. Huh, the protective measures must be wearing off. Usually he does not taste his own blood, even when visiting the deepest, darkness places of both existence and non-existence. It could be that he is tired—focusing entirely too much on balancing between two sides when it could be more of melting into both. Could be he is flowing from one side to the other as though stuck in an hourglass, helpless to the forces outside turning and turning and turning.

Shin hears the whispers, too. Oh, does he. Crawling in from all the curves and edges and holes of the universes he passes through.

No amount of fiddling with safety settings or gear does anything to fend them off. In the end, he has learned to ignore them. Or at least work through the feeling of vessels and heart trickling out from his ears. His manager has unhelpfully pointed out that out of all their workers, he is the only one with the problem.

Well, whatever. His shift is almost up. The last thing he wants to do is _think_.

Touching down where he can actually feel gravity again, Shin drifts through the aerial paths on his Sparrow, patiently following traffic rules and lights. He doesn’t trust himself not to lose focus otherwise. 

Once he drops off the delivery box and gear off at the hub, he immediately changes the shader on his Sparrow for something significantly less advert-y. Moss green paint and the bright yellow _DONGWOON’S NOODLE HOUSE_ vinyl fade into humbler shades. He scrubs at the back of his ears, just checking, before he takes off for home.

Across the street from his apartment complex, bright cyan and red clash overhead in neon advertisements, followed with the bursting staccato of synth-gugak. Chuseok is coming up soon. Shin had almost forgotten about it. He stares a moment at the colors, plastic takeout bag heavy in his left hand. It takes a few seconds to break himself out of the spell. He shakes his head, unlocks the door and takes the stairs.

* * *

“Hear’ foo de grepbin,” Drifter says, the best he can around a mouthful of noodles. “Yer bof eh actuawy par’ bihk.” 

Shin has been around long enough to know how it translates: _heard through the grapevine your boss is actually part Vex_.

He folds his hands over his stomach, mulling it over as he stares at the ceiling. It would not be surprising, really. Dongwoon’s Noodle House has a weird way of showing up in every which time, space and dimension exists and does not exist out there. Shin has other things to worry about, though. Like his paycheck. And Sparrow upkeep. Above all things: staying as retired as he possibly can.

“No,” he finally decides. “She’s not nearly Vex-y enough.”

Drifter makes a vague noise, corners of his mouth stained dark with black bean sauce. The greedy slurping continues, interspersed with the sharp crunch of pickled radish.

“My boss’ boss’ boss might be though. Who knows.”

Drifter makes another noise. Then he gestures at Shin’s untouched jjambbong. “You gonna eat that?”

Shin frowns, but pushes the bowl over anyways. The clock on the wall reads _2:07 a.m_.. The rich orange-red broth sways in the bowl, punctuated with a deeper red circumference that almost glows like ember. Two sharp wooden points dig through the greasy, swirling cosmos of oysters and meat and noodles before scraping against the bottom. Steam billows and snakes along the line of Drifter’s arm. 

Rich broth drips down the length of golden noodles, looking awfully like blood.

He looks away. “Don’t you get sick of eating the same delivery-style noodles?”

“Food is food,” Drifter says. “You’re just ungrateful.”

Shin hums, already staring off at something else. His head does not hurt anymore. If he works his jaw, though, there is still the telltale taste of copper on his tongue. He looks at the clock again, but the minutes are blurred and he cannot read them. It almost looks as though the lights are floating around the room.

“Hey.”

Shin blinks. The room snaps back to focus. “What.”

“You have work tomorrow?”

“I always have work,” Shin grouses. “Unlike someone.”

Drifter’s grin is lazy and sharp all at once. It looks kind of gross, to be honest, because he still hasn’t wiped the dark sauce off his lips and beard. That, and he also has red pepper flakes from the kimchi between his front teeth. “Take a week off.”

He meets Shin’s dull stare evenly, managing to slurp some of the jjambbong without having the noodles smack him in the face. All while keeping eye contact. Whatever question Shin might think to ask, he knows that he will never get a straight answer. Drifter knows that, and he knows that Shin knows that. Shin still says something though, just to be contrary.

“Are you asking me on a date?” he asks, sinking further into his cheap plastic chair. The numbers on the clock are starting to swim again, like ill-behaved holo-jellyfish.

“Could be,” Drifter murmurs, leaning in close. His lips shine with oil, and dark brown flecks stain his mouth. Still, Shin does not move away. Drifter leans even closer, smelling of sauce and seafood, and Shin lets him.

* * *

“Hey Sagira,” Shin says as he dumps his helmet and gear into a crate. It’s midnight, an hour before his shift officially ends. Normally he would stay, but it has been hard to concentrate on anything for the past day. “I need a week off.”

Unperturbed, his manager keeps typing away. “For what?”

“Moving into a new place,” Shin says. Only then does the manager pause in her typing, raising her head to stare at Shin, her blue eyes luminous and guileless. Though the machine cannot actually smile, Shin feels as though she might be, in her own strange way. She makes a staticked noise that he has come to recognize as a laugh, as though she knows Shin inside and out. All of his dirty little secrets.

“Moving in with someone else?”

Shin catches himself almost shifting on his feet. Forces himself to casual stillness. He gives a shrug. “More or less.”

“Getting hitched?”

His hesitation is telling enough, but his manager does not press and goes back to typing whatever she is working on. “Well, that’s fine. Make sure you fill out the requisite paperwork so we have your updated address on file.”

“Right. It’s not really that. It’s just,” he starts, but is unable to find the words to continue, or really explain the situation. There may not exist words in the spectrum of human language to really explain what he and Drifter are. He opens his mouth to ask to leave early, closes it.

“You can go,” Sagira waves her hand at him, wire ligament and steel skeleton gleaming under the fluorescent lights. “Marcus can handle whatever comes our way. If he complains, I’m letting him take your tips for the rest of tonight.”

* * *

So Drifter’s gotten the idea that Shin’s apartment is not just _cozy_. It is downright _cramped_ and surrounded by noise and _people_. And Shin is still paying rent like a good, responsible tenant? Well, that simply will not do.

Shin doesn’t exactly see the logic of moving out of his relatively cheap place into the cavernous chambers of Drifter’s moving castle... home-thing. Where Shin is a minimalist, Drifter is terribly messy. Shin at least has some form of legal income, and he is sure that Drifter’s savings are made up entirely from dirty cash. On the fourth floor, Shin’s apartment tends to be humid and sweltering during monsoon seasons. Drifter’s place is lukewarm at best; at worst, the chill is biting.

Drifter simply smiles, though. Even helps Shin carry up all the cardboard boxes and tape them together, and it makes him feel a little funny. So he spends a couple days packing what little Drifter will even let him take. All of the used furniture gets thrown out, save for the ratty green couch Drifter is fond of crashing on.

Eventually, Shin gets to updating his paperwork, digging up his old holopad since he seems to have misplaced his usual one. The form that Dongwoon’s has sent him is simple enough, and most of his information has not changed anyway. He goes in to update the address and is given the options: street, aerial, oceanic or other.

After a second of thought, he taps the last choice.

The screen then prompts him: _Which category does your new address fall under?_

> _ Please choose one: _
> 
> _[ ] INTER_
> 
> _[ ] INTRA_
> 
> _[ ] EXTRA_
> 
> _[ ] NON-APPLICABLE_
> 
> _ Please choose one: _
> 
> _[ ] DIMENSIONAL_
> 
> _[ ] PLANAR_
> 
> _[ ] SPATIAL_
> 
> _[ ] TEMPORAL_
> 
> _[ ] WORMHOLE_

He reads over the options again and sighs. Closes his eyes and tips his head back.

“Hey,” he calls out to the grumbling mess behind him. His head hurts from reading so many big words. Nevermind the fact that he has experience delivering to residences in all sorts of places and non-places. He himself has never lived at anything but a street residence, or in places that certainly did not qualify to even _consider_ having an address.

“ _What_ ,” Drifter says, voice muffled behind all the boxes Shin had brought in.

“What kind of address does your place have?”

The scuffling cardboard noises stop. Shin hears footsteps as Drifter rounds the pile of boxes with a confused sort of face. He passes the ratty holopad over to Drifter, who makes a nice show of squinting at the big words like he can’t understand them. Like he isn’t the one with three degrees in mech engineering, astronomy and meta-astronomy. Whatever the hell those are.

Drifter finally looks away from the holopad to Shin. Hands it back over. “The hell is this for?”

“Documentation,” Shin says. “Per work policy, I’m required to have a valid address on my file.”

“Like I’m gonna let you put my address out there for free,” Drifter snorts. “Use one of my wormhole boxes. They get routed straight to here. Kinda.”

Shin hands the holopad back to Drifter, who glances at it, then turns his mean gaze back onto Shin. He shrugs.

“I don’t know your so-called home address that changes every five minutes,” Shin says flatly. “Much less the 30 different wormhole boxes you have out there. Fill it out yourself.”

“I have 69, thank you very much,” Drifter sniffs. He starts tapping away at the pad while Shin watches him in silence, lips pursed as he reads through the details. “Hey Shin,” he says suddenly. “When the hell did you actually start caring about documentation?”

“If it makes you feel better,” Shin mumbles, closing his eyes again, “None of it is under my real information.”

“Here I was thinking you were stopping your illicit activities.” Drifter grins, his hand heavy on Shin’s shoulder. “Had me worried for a second there, _pal_.”

Shin does not do anything to move the hand from his shoulder. If Drifter notices anything, he doesn’t mention it.

“I’m still retired,” he reminds tiredly.

“Sure you are,” Drifter says, lifting his hand to calmly fill out the rest of the address change. “ ‘S that why you’ve been keeping tabs on all the unfinished work?”

Shin says nothing, choosing instead to stare at an opened, half-empty box. Has some of his clothes in there. Drifter does not pursue the conversation, and continues tapping away. Another minute passes before he flips the holopad onto Shin’s lap. All it requires is a signature and a date.

“Under wormhole box 47,” he says. “One of the more obscure ones. Nigh-impossible to trace anything that gets put in it.”

He looks at the address and its complicated mix of numbers and letters and symbols. For a second it feels like he has forgotten how to read.

“I’m not going to remember that,” he says, reading over the strange address over and over. _W.H. box #20-487_ , plus some change.

Drifter shrugs, “Don’t need to.” And he goes back to unpacking the boxes.

* * *

Shin has only been working at Dongwoon’s for about half a standard year now. Through some connections, he had managed to land himself a lease for a humble apartment a decent distance to downtown. Inconspicuous. His ID has a photo that is not of him, but looks vaguely enough like him that it won’t raise any questions.

He even has fake credentials—running around all sorts of universes and back hadn’t exactly provided a lot of opportunity for setting up anywhere. All Shin really knows is to be on the hunt, anyway, and staying in one place makes him antsy.

Dongwoon’s had taken him once he had proven he could bear the load of fast-paced travel between basically all locations imaginable and unfathomable, no questions asked. Shin figures it is because people like him haven’t necessarily gained their skills through legal means. Legal on the grounds of “documented by the authorities” sort of way. There is something powerful in the unquestionable nature of Dongwoon’s policies.

He tries not to question too much of it. Technology advances in scary ways, and multi-dimensional noodle delivery is plausibly one of the kinder innovations. Kind of outrageous in the fact they still get business despite local noodle shops very much being a thing. Kind of terrifying, too, that some employees never come back. Coming back dripping of voidlight and unanswered prayer, like a human form distorted over radio static, doesn’t count as coming back _right_.

Shin cannot say anything, though. Company policy. And he has the distinct feeling that someone in the higher ranks might catch onto who he is if he moves too quickly.

So Shin tries to be as retired from his old job—of searching, of hunting, clawing through grime and dark and nothing—the best he can. He does a passable job of it; lots of local folk mistake him as some poor middle-aged college student, just scraping by. The old lady from the countryside who comes into the city everyday gives him a discount whenever he buys fruits or vegetables in bulk. Especially for ginger.

_Good for young men like you_ , she would say, voice rich with Jeolla-do dialect.

“I’m back,” he says, plastic bags rustling as he walks. Today had been a good day to buy fresh sweet potatoes, radish, bok choy and other leafy greens. He sets the bags down on the clean side of their functionable kitchen counter and starts pulling out everything from the bags. The air is sharp with the scent of tangerines.

Shin isn’t good at cooking much outside of instant noodles. He’s handy with a knife, but Drifter often nudges him out of the way with a hip whenever he cooks, claiming he needs to keep the food acceptable to the standard human palate.

He stares at the bubbling broth as Drifter busies himself with other kitchenly duties. The liquid froths at the sides, clinging to stainless steel. It looks like normal soup. Shin blinks and sees a small fount of darkness and green fire.

“Work alright?” Drifter says suddenly, gravelly voice cutting through Shin’s visions, sharper than a knife and as blunt as a punch to the face.

Shin sits up. “Yeah.”

“Well if you’re not dying, get over here and chop the onions, would ya?”

Neither of them like cutting the onions, but it’s fine. Shin takes the knife and chops the onions into precise white cubes, ignoring the sting in his eyes.

* * *


End file.
